


where you can do no harm

by okayantigone



Category: Hunter X Hunter
Genre: Angst, Chronic Illness, Funerals, Gen, Hurt No Comfort, Implied Child Abuse, Implied Opioid Abuse, M/M, Mermaid Kite, Murder, Suicide, Yorkshin Auction, Yorkshin City | Yorknew City (Hunter X Hunter), mentions of cannibalism
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-08-25
Updated: 2019-08-25
Packaged: 2020-09-26 18:30:18
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence, Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 5,254
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/20394223
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/okayantigone/pseuds/okayantigone
Summary: "i'm sorry," pariston said blankly, still staring at the fish tank. "it's just… everything's been so - " he makes a vague motion with his bad hand. "fucked up, since ging left."pariston doesn't curse, and it's been nearly a year since ging left him. two, if mizai starts honestly counting in his head. none of this is about ging, mizai thinks. it's all about pariston, and how hopelessly, irreprievably fucked he himself is.it's like this. pariston wants the mermaid.





	where you can do no harm

**Author's Note:**

  * For [estuarry](https://archiveofourown.org/users/estuarry/gifts).

> this is a VERY EXTREMELY bad and sad fic, with a LOT of bad and sad and dark themes in it, and there's character deaths all around.... MAJOR character deaths even!   
once again, boys and girls, and revered others: NOT a happy fic! 
> 
> ALL credit for the concept of mermaid kite being kept in pariston's aquarium go to my baby elli @estuarry!!! this fic is a gift for them for being smart and lovely and supporting me through my Big Depression Hours   
the concept of pariston killing his father in a formaldehyde tank comes from jean @crownsandbirds and also the hannibal rising movie

_ where you can do no harm _

_ _

_ _

yorknew in the autumn. the streets are brushed clear of fallen leaves, so the vendors can set their wares, and ging can spot a fake from a mile away. he brushes shoulders uncomfortably with the wanderers, but there is nothing here that can tempt him.

he knows what he wants, has set his sights and his millions on it, and everything else is of very little consequence. something about the air in the city feels different. he’s almost never been here during the time of the auction. even the artifacts he does sell, he prefers to dispel through his distributors. people are overrated, loud, they are colorful and buzz about like ants, and he has no patience for them, when there is always something just beyond the horizon for him to focus on. the auction is a hobby for the idle rich, those who have nothing better to spend their time and money on, but he knows exactly what he wants this time.

he’s here for a reason. the map to a supposedly lost empire in the yorbian deserts, tattooed – allegedly on the back of an indigenous man who’d wound up spat out dead by the sea, his corpse many years old, and the art on his precious skin, preserved by the salt, removed, trading hands and so much filthy disgusting money, until ging caught wind of news that he would be able to buy it at auction. and he wanted it. badly.

-

swardani in the summer. the atmosphere in the city had changed sharply. the recklessness approached hysteria. things reach a breaking point in july. pariston hasn’t been to the offices of the hunter association in weeks. mizai drew the short straw, and made the treck to his penthouse, armed with sweetened coffee from the kakin bakery on the other side of town, by the embassy. he wondered it paris had had one of his pain flares, and was simply sleeping it off, but he never skipped work when he could help it, and his trip to padokea had ended a whole week ago. it was odd to go without contact with him for so long.

he used his spare key – the key for emergencies, for  _ in case i drown in my bathtub or something,  _ paris had said with a charming laugh.

the apartment smells like fresh dust, and that’s when mizai knows something has gone horribly, terribly wrong. he walks into the spacious living room, looking for any signs of damage. with pariston, the damage is always there, right beneath the surface.

yes. pariston, and al his damage, right there, beneath the surface of the mermaid tank.

there’s a terrible sound echoing of the perfect white walls of the room. it takes mizai minutes, maybe hours, to realize the noises are coming from him.

-

it’s like this. ging finds a mermaid.

-

august rains fall in thick gray sheets, beating into the grey asphalt of the graveyard lanes.

pariston had had the good sense to make his own funeral arrangements. the rich brown earth turns to mud under it, becomes mud on the shoes of the mourners.

the procession is as it should be, for the vice chairman of the hunter association. there is a viewing. laid out in his shimmering grey suit, his golden hair swept just so, pariston looks serene, handsome and relaxed, like he never did in life. his hands are clasped over his chest, his wedding band glinting in the fluorescent light.

“i heard,” whispers someone, “that ging dragged the divorce out for years, and tried to take him for all his worth, and then when they finally settled… he disappeared without signing anything. so they’re still married. can you believe it?”

“well, we all knew they’d be the death of each other.”

“but did you hear about the – “

mito freeccs cranes her head back to hear better, but the person speaking lapses into silence uncomfortably.

it’s strange to be here, in this unfamiliar city, when she hadn’t so much as left whale island before. the letter had been strange. the phone call with the sad confused man on the phone – even stranger. it was impossible and unfitting to imagine that ging had had a life here, with these people. that he had  _ married.  _ that gon had another father, and he was now being laid in the ground.

she and abe had debated furiously on wether gon was old enough to see it. but he’d wanted a father all his life. it would be cruel to deny him seeing at least one parent, at least once. she couldn’t bear the possibility of gon growing up to resent her for not allowing him to come and see. now he sat beside her, stone faced and quiet like she’d never seen him before.

ging’s kind-faced woman-friend – the one in a lab coat – had patted him absent-mindedly on his head and told him he had his father’s eyes, and then slapped a hand on her mouth, and walked away.

someone behind her clears their throat, and she turns around. her eyebrows disappear somewhere in her hairline, she's sure. the man standing behind her is familiar in the way all the people here are familiar - someone she's seen on tv somewhere. she recognizes the sharp set of his features, and his dirty blonde hair falling around his face. he's pushing a wheelchair, where a delicate boned young boy - probably a little older then gon - is sitting, staring vacantly into space with glass eyes. her brain catches up to her, somewhere around the time she connects the discreet, black suited bodyguards, with the crimson royal sash - the ambassador of the kakin empire to swardani city, the fourth crown prince of the empire, smiles politely at her, his eyes completely empty. "would it be okay to sit here?" he asks, and takes a seat on the pew next to her. it's convinient, because then the boy int he wheelchair can just be settled next to him.    
  
"i wasn't aware vice chairman hill had any family," he says, and she realizes he's speaking to her. she's speakingto royalty.    
  
"yes, i - well. i wasn't aware we were family either," she says finally. "i'm his sister in law." 

at funerals, of course, the closest relatives sit first. but since pariston hill is an orphan, and no one managed to find ging to tell him his husband had died, the pews would be reserved for the most important people. that is, until mizaistom nana - the sad man she'd spoken to on the phone, and apparently ging and pariston's lawyer, had found her and gon on whale island. 

they had been the only people at the will reading. pariston hill had been wealthy. wealthy didn't even begin to cover it. he'd made donations to a few charities, and organizations he cared about, willed some priceless artifacts to the hunter association, and to his - here, mizaistom had made a painful pause - friends, and everything else - millions of jennu, over twenty international properties, a yacht, land, all of it - was left to her, to be helt in trust until gon came of age. 

_ perhaps you will find it cruel and immoral that i have spent all these years knowing of my son's existence, and doing nothing to contact him or his family. ging made it clear to me that he had no intention of allowing me near our son, and i chose to respect his wishes. truthfully, i never saw myself as a father - by the time i realized ging was with child, we were already in the process of separation. he wanted me to have no part of his or his child's life beyond his creation. but it would be even more irresponsible of me to be aware of the child's existence, and make no provisions for his future.  _

-

ging checks into his airdnd - a one bedroom flat a stone's throw away from the site of the auction. he's got notes from his last expedition to go over, and there's no point in going there until the third night anyway. he's not interested in any other items for sale. 

scarlet eyes. how tacky. pariston had a pair in a beautoful glass jar on his desk at the hunter association headquarters. the last time ging was there, he'd accidentally-on-purpose knocked them over while pariston was busy bending him over the desk.    
"as if the princeling who gave this to you could ever give you what i can." 

"maybe you haven't noticed, darling," pariston had said silkily, "but i don't want anything of yours anymore." 

they'd fucked, and then paris had thrown ging out of his office, with the paperwork for his second star without so much as a backwards glance. 

he locks the door to the apartment, draws the blinds over the windows, and puts the kettle on. time to make some coffee, and hunker down for some note-writing. 

-

kite has bone white skin, with a delicate bluish tint, and their hair is longer than their entire graceful body, a beautiful shimmering silver that matches the fine, thin scales of their tail. they live in the ruins of the sunken dark continent expedition, and the dead are their friends. 

"no one ever comes here," they say. above water their voice sounds husky, rough and delicious. 

"are there others?" ging had asked.    
  
"other what?"    
  
"you know. mermaids? like you?" 

kite shrugs their lovely round shoulders. "i dunno. it's always been just me." 

"aren't you lonely?"    
  


kite shrugs, again. ging spends months at the bottom of the ocean, studying the ships, and kite is with him, beautiful and savage. ging watches him tear into an orka with their sharp, diamond hard nails, and rip it to bits with their teeth.    
  
they'd swam up to the beachside of the island where ging's expedition had set camp, pulling thsmelves into the shallows, leaning a sharp chin on their laced fingers. their mouth was still red with blood.    
  
"this is for you," they said cheerfully, and handed ging the packet of meat. "it's the fins. you humans think they're a delicacy, right?" 

they'd splashed their tail into the water, sending salt droplets at ging, and laughed at his bewildered expression. 

when ging could no longer find a reason why they should stay on the island, to go through the rotten wood, and the bones of the sunken expedition, and his crew was starting to rumble about being forced to live off of canned food for too many weeks in a row, despite the abundance of fresh kills kite provided… 

he knew it was time to leave. and he had no intentions of leaving kite. 

-

"you can't fuck a mermaid," pariston laughed over sattelite radio, and shut the connection down. 

-

when ging leaves, pariston wants to burn everything ging's ever loved and salt the earth. he wants to take money from starving indigenous children, and use it to pollute rivers that pour into the ocean, drown all the mermaids, break all the ancient stoned, unravel the mummies, and make himself curtains out of their bandages, just to see ging's indignant face. and ging wants to do the same to him. he comes to diplomatic functions he never cared about before, gets drunk, and talks loudly about pariston's favorite bedroom games, sells the pictures he took of a young-faced paris on his knees for chairman netero to the papers - and paris hadn't even known there were pictured, they'd fucked so good the morning the papers came out, while he called ging a dirty pervert - calls him alex to his face, and to the face of others, tells all their mutual aquintances about the time pariston broke a mug into his face, but not about the time he shoved paris down a flight of stairs at the beach house he's now trying to get from him. 

pariston walks in mizai's office at eight in the morning on a wednesday, carrying two cups of kakin coffee, and a stack of papers. the republic of rokario had just withdrawn his diplomatic immunity, and intended to prosecute him since one his and ging's spats had apprently resulted in some minister dying, or something. he'd gone blind in his left eye about two days ago. he hadn't slept in four. he set the stack of papers on the desk, and put the coffee down.    
  
"deal with this, and deal with him," he said. "i'm done trying. invoice me when you're done." 

"is there anything you want to keep?" mizai had asked cautiously.    
  
pariston had shrugged. "i don't want anything of his. everything else can go." 

"the beach house?" 

pariston shrugged again. "which one?" 

then he'd walked away. 

-

it's like this. pariston wants the mermaid. 

-

by the time ging emerges from the trance-like state in which he often finds himself when researching, the phantom troupe has robbed the auction and fooled the mafia twice over. 

he throws his coat on, and goes into the building for the final evening. he catches snatches of conversation that imply something horrible has recently happened, but doesn't care enough to really focus on listening. instead, he leans over the railing, and watches the stage. 

they bring out lot 537, which is a beautiful vase from the yorbian continent, found in the ruins of tsaho city in the sahertan desert. it's about as tall as a child, made of natural red clay, with engravings in it depicting scenes of the domestic life of two men. the engravings have been brushed with bronze. it's lovely. ging brought one back for paris when he was assisting at a dig there. it had a chip in the rim, and a crack near the bottom. he took it instead of payment. pariston put preserved extinct flowers in it, and kept it in his bedroom. 

the curator of the auctions drones on and on about some damages to the vase. a crack or something. in two items it will be the map of skin he's after, and he's confident he can outbid every single man in this room. 

"lot 538, a silver music box with a swan carved into the lid, and mother of pearl detailing. the box is in working condition, and if you open it, you will find a figurine of a yorbian traveller playing the guitar. the boz is lined with velvet, and can be used to store jewelry. this box holds lot 539 - a full set of baby teeth, each one cast in silver." 

morbid, ging thinks. pariston had kept his baby teeth in a box in his bedside cabinet, with his grandmother's pearls. 

after lot 540, he'll finally be able to bid for the map, get it, and leave. 

-

getting half of his living room converted into a floor to wall bullet proof tank and replacing his french windows with the kind of glass that can hold in several thousand gallons of salt water is the kind of business that takes a long time regardless of how much money you spend to smooth it along. in the mean time, kite the mermaid luxuriates in the salt water pariston had poured into his bath, and stares at him with dull eyes. 

"ging doesn't care enough to come and save me from you, you know," they say, flipping their glorious silver hair over one shoulder.    
  
"i don't really think you need saving," pariston challenges.    
  
"don't i?"

pariston shrugs. he wouldn't know the first thing about saving anyone anyway. 

kite just snaps their gorgeous teeth at him, and pariston wants to bleed out in their arms. 

"he's not going to come back to save you either," kite calls out after him, when he goes to take a look at how the workers are doing. 

by the end of the week, kite the mermaid is swimming in the tank in pariston's living room, and looking down at the city with wide curious eyes. pariston brings them fresh meat, and watches them feast.    
  
"i want to kill something," kite says. 

pariston smiles with savage glee. he'd been wondering how to make all those filthy men who saw his mermaid disappear. 

-

lot 540 is big. two men wheel it in, and pull the canvas hiding it down. a gasp rocks the room. ging feels as though a scythe has slashed out his feet. he wants to will himself into unseeing what he has seen. 

"lot 540 is the preserved body of a mermaid, originally from near the uncharted waters. the tank is carved of fused silica glass and policarbonate layers, sealed shut with medical steel. it contains a solution of formaldehyde and salt water to preserve the body in its current state. ideal temperature for the tank is at minus ten degrees celsius, to ensure the body remains in an optimal state for showing. all embalming processes on the body itself have already been completed. this lot is the last from the collection donated to the auction by our generous patron who wishes to remain anonymous, and as with all previous lots, a pecentage of the proceeds will be donated to the matilda henn home for victims of domestic violence, here in yorknew city, per our generous donor's request. bidding for the mermaid will start at 2.5 million jenny, and i am sure you can all see why - he is very beautiful - "

ging tunes her out. he can't tear his eyes from kite in the tank. their eyes are open, staring right into ging. through their parted lips, ging can see the glint of teeth. their hair coils around their slender, graceful body. they look beautiful in death, as they did in life. there isn't a single mark or blemish on them. 

ging wants pariston dead. 

-

when pariston passes out, it takes kite a minute to realize what's happened. paris had been climbing the staircase that winded arounf kite's tank, and lead to the second floor of the penthouse, where paris spent his evenings, on the platform next to the tank's edge, reading to kite, or brushing their hair, or swimming laps in the water with them like he wasn't scared that kite might drown him. he'd let out a soft, quiet exhale of air, and raised a hand to his temple, then gracefully, almost in slow motion, tumbled backwards down the stairs. 

kite had used all the strength in their arms to drag themselves out of the tank and to the phone stand in pariston's office, all the way across the hall. their scales catch on the fibers of the fine carpet.

pariston had shown them how a phone worked. kite remembered everything. they wheezed "help" into the receiver. their gills burn, and their vision blurs uncomfortably. they feel quite dizzy, their skin sticky with sweat and salt. 

-

"it's morbid," mizai said quietly. 

pariston was sitting in his wheelchair, hands folded neatly in his lap. his left leg was in a cast from foot to mid thigh. he was meant to keep one arm in a sling, but didn't. 

"i don't care," pariston said, while watching workers syphon all the saltwater out, and replace iwth formaldehyde. 

"you should ... i don't know. bury him at sea. or something. this is gruesome and disrespectful." 

"suppose when you die, we just make you into some cutlets then, shall we, you great big cow?" pariston snapped, and mizai flinched as though he'd been slapped.    
"i'm sorry," pariston said blankly, still staring at the tank. "it's just… everything's been so - " he makes a vague motion with his bad hand. "fucked up, since ging left." 

pariston doesn't curse, and it's been nearly a year since ging left him. two, if mizai starts honestly counting in his head. 

none of this is about ging, mizai thinks. it's all about pariston, and how hopelessly, irreprievably fucked he himself is. 

the morticians deposit kite's body in the tank, and pariston presses the button that seals it with its bulletproof glass roof. now pariston can sit and have his evening scotch with the dead body of his honey floating beneath his feet. 

mizai wonders if this is what pariston would have done to ging too. 

-

"your highness," mizai says uncomfortably, looking at the handsome, politely empty face of prince tserriednich. "i regret to be meeting you under such tragic circumstances."   
"my condolences," prince tserriednich says, "were you close with the vice chairman?"   
mizai isn't sure how to answer, so he ignores the question. "i asked for this meeting, on a rather discreet matter," he says.    
prince tserriednich's blind pet, currently sitting in a plush armchair, pretending to read a book, whose pages he hasn't touched nor flipped since pariston walked in, raoses his beautiful head.

"pariston has left you… that is to say, you'll have to pardon me… his flesh collection." 

prince tserriednich tries very hard to keep a straight face, mizai can tell, but his eyes are glowing demonic and pleased.    
"that includes, most notably…" mizai takes in a deep breath, "one preserved pair of scarlet eyes, with slight damage to the left eyeball, a set of human baby teeth cast in silver, a sahertan human bone flute, two yorbian hands of the thief, and a fully preserved mermaid corpse in a tank. the full description of these items you can find right here." 

he puts the papers he'd prepared on the table, from where tserriednich takes it. 

"if i remember correctly, i gave those scarlet eyes to the vice chairman, and they were in perfect condition. i wonder whatever befell them." 

"well, it's not as though he can tell us," the prince's blind pet says, and shrugs gracefully. 

-

_ dear gon,  _

_ if you are reading this, something quite unfortunate has befallen me. you don't know me, and hopefully, you never will. my name is pariston hill, and i am your biological father. i was married to ging when he became pregnant with you, though we were already in the process of separating from one another.  _

_ i am sorry that i never contacted you. ging expressly forbade me from it, and i kept my distance. i would not have made a very good father, as i did not have a very good father myself. even so, i hope to leave you with something of mine. i hope you can have the kind of life you have always wanted, and so i have endeavored to ensure that you have ebery material provision to allow you to travel or study, or do whatever it is that pleases you.  _

_ your aunt mito has a full list of the effects i have left in your possession, and when you are of age, she will, i'm sure, give it to you. even so, i wish to express a few things: _

_ i hope a day will come, when you will find someone you love more than life itself. when that day comes, take them to the beach house on the glam gas coast, where we were once so very happy. i have also left you with my grandmother's pearls, and i ask that you keep them within the family.  _

_ finally, most importantly, i leave you my hunter's license. you can use it as a passport to most countries, and exclusive access to places you wouldn't normally be able to go. even though you are, yourself, not a hunter, and therefore, cannot access all the benefits it comes with, it has always been one of my most valued objects.  _

_ i also want to leave you with this bit of advice: do not chase after ging. don't ever go out into the world with all its beautiful things thinking you can find him or bring him back, or convince him to love you. this is what ging's love does to people, and i couldn't bear to leave this world knowing i could have warned you off him and didn't. he is a cold, cruel, careless man. he is incapable of love or care, and he will leave when you bore him. leaving is what he does. it's all he's ever been good at. if you see him -run, if comes back to you- slam the door in his face.  _

_ there are many things in the world you will be able to protect yourself from, with all that i have left you. ging is not one of them.  _

_ i hope you are safe, and loved, and find everything you could ever look for.  _

_ vice chairman of the hunter association, your father,  _

_ pariston hill.  _

-

ging takes the hunter association building by storm. 

he slams the door to mizai's office open, and snarls through miraculously perfect white teeth "where the hell is he?" 

mizai had forgotten that this was pariston's office. well. he hadn't really. it was impossible to forget. every bit of tasteful decor screamed paris. he'd been workig as interim vice-chancellor for a few months now, since the funeral. there was no one with the kind of experience and connections pariston had to take on the job, and run the association while netero was doing… whatever he was doing that wasn't his job. 

all the zodiacs had trialed, and somehow it had ended up on him. drawing the short straw as usual. 

he'd been awake for three days now. he used to think that pariston never slept out of stubbornness. now he was beginning to think it was simply because there was no time for it. no wonder he'd set up a small bedroom in his office. 

he looked up from his huntmail with its four hundred new messages, and took a sip of the kakin bakery coffee, which really was superior to the coffee in all other bakeries in swardani, and took the time to take ging in. dirty, dusty clothes, and a face twisted by fury he had no right to. and because mizai knew exactly what ging was here for, and because whatever real or imagined slight pariston had inflicted on ging  _ now  _ couldn't possibly matter anymore, and because he was tired, and had used up all his concessions, he said, voice even and emotionless, 

"pariston is dead, ging." 

-

"we're being called back home, little dove," tserriednich said cheerfully. pairo marked the page in his book, set it down, and raised his face to acknowledge he was listening.    
"things are starting to move," he said, glee thrumming in his voice. 

"lovely," pairo said quietly, his voice barely a whisper. "are you sure you can win?" 

"aw, are you worried about me, my dove?" 

pairo shrugged. "not particularly. if you die, i'll just have to find a enw benefactor. it won't be easy, but…"    
"you're cruel," tserr said, and smacked him on the lips, in too good a mood to be perturbed. 

pairo licked his lips and sighed. 

a happy tserr could be downright terrifying. "what will you do with all the new aquisitions to your collection, then?"

"well, anything that we can't really bring back, we'll have to leave, i suppose…" tserr said musingly. "setting something up with the yorknew auction might be a good idea. i mean, we're still after the three pairs of eyes they're selling, so we'll have people there …" 

pairo let him ramble on, and hummed appreciatively. as the last kurta it was his responsibility to retrieve all the scarlet eyes that had been scattered, and give them a proper burial. the price for tserriednich's help had been his own eyes, but it's not as though they were any use to him. by the time he made contact with the infamous flesh collector who turned out to be one of the kakin crown princes, his sight had long gone. and he'd been right in assuming that the thrill of being the only man in the world to own scarlet eyes would please the prince enough to be willing to help him. 

"that means the mermaid too, doesn't it?" pairo asked, and tserr paused.    
"i suppose. that's unfortuate, but … it's a bit too cumbersome and delicate for a trans continental journey." 

"is it true?" pairo asked, as he listened to tserr moving around the royal apartments they shared. 

"is what?" 

"that he was in love with the mermaid?" 

tserr hums thoughtfully. "you know? i honestly have no idea." 

-

pariston hill has a bottle of red wine from the year of his birth, a headache and no friends. he stares at the wall of water in his living room, and the beautiful corpse floating there. kite's long graceful arms outstretched, their scales glittering so pretty in the light of his tasteful crystal chandellier from three centuries ago. 

their hair looks like the wires of a fisherman's nest, ready to snare him and drag him deep. he drinks sraight from the bottle. 

kite… beautiful kite with their soulful eyes, and glistening teeth, saying the darnedest things. 

"are you lonely," paris would ask, and kite would shake their lovely head. 

"i'm never lonely," they'd say, "i have you. you come here every day. it's more than i had before. and unlike ging, you always come back." 

"do you miss the ocean?"    
"why would i?" 

"are you happy here," paris had asked. 

kite had shot him a look, "are you?" 

then they'd dived back in the water, and hadn't come out of their tank to talk to him for days. they'd come out eventually though. 

he raises the bottle to them, and drinks to their death. 

kite who died to save him. his pretty drowned mermaid, who choked on air.

pariston emptied the bottle. 

"are you?" that was the last think kite said to him. "are you?" 

of course he wasn't. pariston hadn't been happy a day in his life. except with ging. god, he'd been so deliriously happy with ging. 

he thought that must have been like how his mother felt after taking her happy pills. 

then ging left. he throws the bottle at the wall. 

he's lonely. he wants kite. wants to sit on the platform by the tank and brush their hair, while they tell him stories, splashing their tail in the water idly. wants kite to show him their teeth, and play a game of counting them, rewarding kite with fried chicken for the patience. 

he drags himself up the stairs, wobbly and slow. he misses kite. he misses ging. 

he hates that kite was right. ging didn't come back to save either one of them. 

he pushes the button that opens the tank roof, and sits at the edge. dips his socked feet in the water. 

he sat on the roof of the tanks int he morgue while his father pounded up at them from the inside, and he did not let him out. 

kite never asked to be let out. just wanted, with those big eyes of his, to make pariston come in. 

"i'm coming in now," pariston said to no one in particular. he lowered himself in the tank. he would do anything to be like kite was right now. beautiful, and unaware. just floating forever, in the heart of someone who loves him very much. he reached to the control panel, and pushed the button that slid the roof panel closed, then took a deep breath, and dived. 

kite's arms extended to him, beautiful, and cold, and all that gorgeous silver hair ensnared him like in his dreams. through blurry eyes he could see the thick ten inch glass sliding closed. and now, he couldn't leave her if he tried. 

"are you happy here?" kite asks, and smiles with their many teeth. 

  
pariston pulls their beautiful heavy body to his chest, and whispers "i am, i am." 


End file.
